News

CCL Responds to Stay Motion

July 18th, 2018

After a federal district court agreed with CCL's arguments that Airbus had no authority to claim that it was a federal officer and remove a state court lawsuit against it to federal court, Airbus has sought a stay of the order remanding the case to its original state court while it appeals the decision to the Ninth Circuit.

In requesting the stay, Airbus claimed that it need only raise a substantial issue on appeal, rather than show it likely to prevail, the explicit standard for such stays. It also claimed that no one would be prejudiced by a brief detour to the Ninth Circuit. In response, CCL argued that the standard to support a stay was far more rigorous than raising a substantial issue and that, on average, the Ninth Circuit takes 22 months from the notice of appeal to final disposition of an appeal, according to official federal court statistics. That type of delay would deny the plaintiffs, mourning the death of their son in a helicopter crash, justice and create problems with evidence and witness accounts for a trial that would end up taking place more than two years from the time of this motion. Moreover, if Airbus was not interested in delaying tactics, it would have filed its notice of appeal immediately, rather than insist, as it did, on waiting the full 30 days it is allowed, which has yet to expire.